The GiveWell Blog

Investigating neglected goals in scientific research

A major goal of the Open Philanthropy Project is to explore the topic of scientific research funding, starting with life sciences. This post discusses the process we’ve used so far, including some of the challenges we’ve faced and changes we’ve made in our investigation methods: We first discuss some of the general challenges of finding…

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General progress and plans for GiveWell as an organization in 2015

This is the fifth post (of six) we’re planning to make focused on our self-evaluation and future plans. Previous posts have discussed our 2014 progress on, and 2015 plans for, Our traditional work on top charities delivering evidence-backed interventions. See our posts on 2014 progress and 2015 plans. The Open Philanthropy Project. See Open Philanthropy Project: Progress in 2014…

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Open Philanthropy Project: Progress in 2014 and plans for 2015

This is the fourth post (of six) we’re planning to make focused on our self-evaluation and future plans. We’re in the midst of finalizing detailed updates on Open Philanthropy Project progress and plans. This post gives a high-level summary, comparing our progress and stage of development with what we hoped for as of a year…

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Open Philanthropy Project update: Global catastrophic risks

This post lays out our progress, since last year, on identifying potential focus areas for our work on global catastrophic risks. SummaryNote: this section is similar to the introduction of our previous post on U.S. policy. The overall approach of our work has evolved similarly in the two areas. Last year, we set a “stretch…

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Open Philanthropy Project update: U.S. policy

Last year, we set a “stretch goal” for the Open Philanthropy Project: There are two types of causes – global catastrophic risks and US policy issues – that we now feel generally familiar with (particularly with the methods of investigation). We also believe it is important for us to pick some causes for serious commitments…

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2015 plan for GiveWell’s traditional (“top charities”) work

This is the third post (of six) we’re planning to make focused on our self-evaluation and future plans. The goal of this post is to update GiveWell’s followers on our plans for our traditional work in 2015 and to establish a general set of goals by which we can evaluate ourselves at the beginning of…

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